Social care is a profession where people work in partnership with those who experience marginalisation or disadvantage or who have special needs. Social care practitioners may work, for example, with children and adolescents in residential care, people with learning or physical disabilities, the homeless, and people with alcohol/drug dependency, families in the community, older people, and recent immigrants to Ireland.

Graduates of this social care course are referred to as Social Care Practitioners and will typically work in a direct person-to-person capacity with the users of services. They will seek to provide an environment in which various social, educational and relationship interventions can take place in the day to day living space of the service user.

A Social Worker's role on the other hand is to manage the case, for example, co-ordinating case review meetings and negotiating the termination of a placement. Work in the sector is typically interdisciplinary and it would be very likely that social care workers, social workers, early childhood care workers, etc. would work together in multi-disciplinary teams in many work situations.

The social care course at the MTU is delivered through lectures, workshops and two full semesters of off-site supervised practice placement. In this social care course,  it is essential that students develop and refine practical working skills/methods in field-based settings and demonstrate their competence in performing social care roles.

To meet this requirement, the fieldwork visits/placements are structured into the social care course to ensure that graduates are fully prepared for the diversity that the sector can offer.

Due to the broad range of discipline areas covered on the social care course there are a wide variety of career opportunities for graduates in the public and voluntary sector. Areas include residential care, outreach, alcohol/drug dependency, family support, community care, older people, juvenile justice and community childcare services.

MTU Social care course graduates can also work as carers of children in need of care and protection, carers of children with special needs, carers of adults with special needs and or behavioural difficulties. Community care workers are involved in providing outreach and family support services for children and adults living at home.

Career options exist in a variety of settings including the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the substantial voluntary and community sectors. The broad nature of the placement experience on this programme provides students with an opportunity to decide the field that they are best suited to.